Cooking with Gas
by katbybee
Summary: A Mini-Bang Written for the 2017 Hogan's Heroes Big Bang. Summary: Could one of Carter's "hare-brained schemes" actually save the day?"


Colonel Hogan had a problem. A big one. His team needed to blow an ammo dump. A big one. Normally, this was not a problem. However, Klink had doubled the guard because Hochstetter was going to be holding an inspection. The truly irritating part of the whole situation was that the ammo dump was located only two hundred yards from the back of the camp. Apparently, the Nazis had decided that placing the dump near a POW camp would ensure its safety. The size of the dump made it essential that the dump be destroyed.

Therefore, Hogan had a problem. London wanted them to knock out the ammo dump, but there had no way to get to it. He and his team were sitting around the table hashing things out one afternoon. Kinch had taken apart one of one of the lamps they used in the barracks to clean it. Watching him, Andrew Carter's eyes lit up. He grinned excitedly. "Bingo!"

Carter stood up and rushed to the bunk exit, slapped it and disappeared without another word. His barracks-mates all looked at each other in confusion for a moment. Newkirk shook his head and shrugged. He picked his cards up and shuffled them, dealing out a hand of gin to anyone interested. They were used to their eccentric tech sergeant. Kinch chuckled and went back to cleaning the lantern.

Carter came back up a couple of hours later. Louis LeBeau was busy at the small woodstove, stirring a pot of rabbit stew. One had popped up in the field behind the barracks and Carter and Olsen had trapped it. Though Carter was an animal lover, he had grown up on a farm, so he was not overly sentimental when it came to matters of survival. He would have only been upset if someone tried to stew his pet rabbit, who currently resided in his lab, along with his mouse, Felix.

Carter poured himself a cup of coffee and grinned at Hogan. "I think I solved our problem, boy, I mean sir."

Hogan looked at him quizzically. "Oh? You come with an idea?"

"Yessir. Actually, Kinch gave me the idea. I just had to go check a couple things out."

"So, what is it?"

"Rabbits, sir."

They all looked at him as if he had finally lost it. "Come again?"

"Rabbits. Well, actually, their burrows. There's an old deserted rabbit warren that runs from the back of the camp clear out to the ammo dump." He reached into his pocket, and pulled out some bits of odd looking gravel. "See, this is carbide. They use it in the lamps in camp. All we have to do is swipe some out of the supply hut. I can mix it with water, makes acetylene gas and run it into the warren from one of the rabbit holes in camp, and it will spread down through the burrows into the ammo dump. When you light off the gas…" He grinned, his eyes dancing maniacally.

Hogan rubbed his chin and raised his eyebrows. "Boom?"

"You betcha, boy, I mean, sir! It'll blow that ammo dump clear to Berlin!"

Newkirk held up a hand. "One problem, mate. If that gas takes out all those rabbit tunnels, won't it take everything else between here and the dump with it?"

Carter shook his head. "Well, not really, because the burrows are pretty narrow, and the gas has to travel pretty far, so it shouldn't be so strong that it would actually blow up the trees or anything. It would be better if I could get closer, but I think there's a spot way in the back that should be close enough."

LeBeau had a question. "How do we explain it to the _Boche_?"

Carter scratched his head. "I dunno. Maybe get London to send a night raid over and 'accidently' bomb the area. Klink would never know they didn't actually drop a bomb. Besides, it might keep him happy for a couple of days, thinking the Allies almost bombed their own camp!"

The others looked at him with varying degrees of admiration or amazement. Carter had just single-handedly planned a mission, and solved a difficult problem for London. Now all they had to do was make it work. They slapped him on the back, with nods of approval, which was not something they often did. Andrew's reaction to their praise was typical. He simply grinned, shrugged, and headed back to his lab. Hogan put Newkirk, LeBeau and Foster onto the task of relieving the supply hut of a few sacks of carbide. He sent Fitzimmons down to help Carter prepare for the mission.

~HH~

They spent the next morning wandering around the field, scouting for the best rabbit holes to use. Newkirk had a question for his best mate. "Carter, just how do you know this warren is deserted anyway?"

"Because Hasenpfeffer* told me it is."

Newkirk turned to him in disbelief. "Hang on. Your pet rabbit told you?"

"Well, sure. I was telling him all about my idea, and he told me they weren't using this warren anymore because the colony didn't like all the shouting and tramping around in the woods. They moved to a new spot in a field farther north last spring. He's sure they won't mind us using it, since it's for a good cause." Andrew went back to checking out rabbit holes, leaving Peter feeling as if he just might have fallen down one.

~HH~

Late that night, Carter and Newkirk lay concealed behind some brush at the edge of camp. Their work blacks helped conceal them, as did the fact that they had chosen a blind spot that fell directly between two of the guard towers. Everything was ready to go. The team had done their parts and now they were back in the barracks waiting for the grand finale. Carter checked his watch. The plane was due in less than twenty minutes.

The trickiest part had been getting the small generator and pump there, but they managed it that afternoon by hauling them in a rubbish wagon, and policing the area in the process. Carter and Walt Fitzimmons had spent the next few hours transporting the carbide to the field under cover of darkness. Kinch and Taffy had helped sneak four jerry cans of water up to their hiding spot. LeBeau had carried Carter's siphoning hose. And Hogan had kept Klink from getting suspicious by engaging him in a game of chess.

Whispering, Carter went over the plan again. "When we hear the bombers, I'll use the noise to cover the sound of the generator and blow the carbide down the burrow as far as I can. Then I'll turn that one off and hit the second switch, which will pump the water into the hose."

Newkirk nodded. "Right, mate. Then we let the water run till the plane is almost overhead. And then, we turn it off."

"Right. Then I toss a lit match into the hole."

"Right. Then what?"

Carter grinned. "Then, we _run_."

~HH~

There was a lot of disagreement the next day about what exactly happened. The entire camp had heard the enemy planes fly over. No one got too excited about it, since night raids were a normal part of the routine. What got everyone's attention was the tremendous explosion a few hundred yards to the rear of the camp. It lit up the sky as bright as day, and sent the guards in the nearby towers scrambling for cover as magazines of ammo, weapons, and bombs exploded with abandon. The show went on for about twenty minutes, though no one dared venture outside to watch it.

Hogan had warned the prisoners ahead of time, so most of them were safely in the tunnels during the mission. The camp sirens had given plenty of warning. Klink hid under his bed. Schultz and Langenscheidt were on duty in the cooler, which was probably the safest building in the camp. If Hogan felt any guilt about the possibility of any of the Germans being hurt, it was tempered by the knowledge that it wasn't _his_ fault the dump had been put there in the first place.

~HH~

When the prisoners were eventually allowed up into the back field, they were impressed with the damage. At least, most of them were. Newkirk noticed Carter didn't seem particularly interested. "You did a grand job, mate!"

Carter shrugged, but finally chuckled.

"What?" Peter was curious.

"We used to do this all the time back home. I was just remembering one time when my dad miscalculated a little. He decided to get rid of some gophers, and he wound up blowing up half my mom's garden. He also put a crack in the foundation of my gran's house."

Newkirk blinked in surprise. "How'd he manage that?"

Carter grinned. "He didn't realize the gopher run went straight under Momma's garden and on underneath Gran's house!"

Newkirk rolled his eyes, and waited. He knew it was coming…

"I never thought Gran even _knew_ words like that!"

~The End~

A/N: * "Hasenpfeffer" is what Andrew called the rabbit he caught in the episode "Klink vs. the Gonculator," though his intention was not originally to make him a pet! Btw, the inspiration for this piece came from the event described by Carter at the end of the story. That is _exactly_ what my father, a welder, did to my mother's garden…and our own _brand-new_ house, when I was 12 years old. It was the first time I ever heard my mother resort to that sort of language!


End file.
